The QS World University Rankings rate universities according to reputation among academics, reputation among employers, citations per faculty, staff-to-student ratios and international attractiveness.

"British universities do particularly well in our academic reputation ratings, based on a survey of 46,000 academics around the world," says Danny Byrne, editor of QS Top Universities, a media and research company specialising in higher education.

"Although the US has always dominated in research citations – it has nine of the top 10 – a near-universal trend has been improvement among British universities."

In total, eight UK universities were in the top 50, and 18 overall in the top 100.

The QS World Rankings are in their ninth year since they were first compiled in 2004. Over that time Oxford and Cambridge have remained near the top of the rankings, while Imperial and UCL have seen steady improvement.

UCL moves up three places from seventh last year to fourth, overtaking both Oxford and Imperial as well as Yale University (7).

"UCL has particularly increased its research citations – that's why it's overtaken Oxford," says Byrne. "That and because of its improved international profile. Imperial also does very well in our employer reputation survey, which asks which universities produce the best graduates."

American universities continue to dominate the top 100 however, with 130 of the top 700 universities based in the United States.

The growing internationalisation of higher education was a major feature of this year's rankings. In keeping with significant growth in recent years, the number of international students across the top 100 institutions rose by another 10 per cent year on year.

A boost in foreign student and staff numbers particularly contributed to the success of MIT, whose pioneering "massively open online course" project MITx has helped it to foster a strong international reputation.

MIT also now ranks top in 11 of the 28 subject tables produced by QS along the same criteria.

“The rise of MIT coincides with a global shift in emphasis toward science and technology”, says QS head of research Ben Sowter. “MIT perfects a blueprint that is now being followed by a new wave of cutting-edge tech-focused institutions, especially in Asia”.

Harvard University, placed third in this year's rankings, had topped the table for six consecutive years between 2004-2009. Harvard remains the highest ranked world university according to the "reputation among academics" criterion.

There is less good news for other European universities, as France claims only two universities in the top 50 and Germany none, although Switzerland boasts two in the top 30 – ETH Zurich (13) and EPFL Lausanne (30).